Mark Warner on Virginia Miners' Benefits

From U.S. Senator Mark Warner (D-VA):

"
Dear Friend,
Throughout my time in the Senate, I've made fighting to protect the safety net for Virginia's retired coal miners one of my top priorities. Unfortunately, some Virginia miners and their families are at risk of losing their benefits if Congress doesn't act. Working with West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin, I've sponsored a bipartisan bill called the American Miners Act that would protect the pensions and healthcare benefits that miners all across coal country have earned through a lifetime of hard work.
Below you can read my op-ed, published in the Bristol Herald Courier, with more information about the American Miners Act and what I'm doing to fight for these miners and their families in Washington. I hope you'll give it a read.
If there’s an issue that’s important to you or a question you’d like to ask, I invite you to send me an email and follow my work in the Senate on Facebook and Twitter. I look forward to hearing from you.



Sincerely,
"

[that signature graphic Google doesn't like: Mark Warner]

Twitter's Awkward Compromise

First of all let me observe that Jack Dorsey and the Twitter Team probably felt very proud of Twitter's latest compromise between the Real Twits' insistence that Twitter be of and for the people, and the mere twits' incessant whining for censorship. I spent some time investigating this last week. Twitter now does use censorship, and it doesn't.

For those who don't know, I host a live chat on Twitter on Tuesdays, 2-3 p.m. local time (New York time), called #GlyphosateAwareness. All use of that hashtag during the week brings you into the chat, whether you participate in it live or not.

The technology of this live chat is the simplest. I want anything I publish online to be accessible to people using Opera from 1992. I use both an officially obsolete version of Windows Explorer and an "older" version of Chrome for Twitter. (Sometimes I use them at the same time--the picture-free version of Twitter that opens in Explorer is much faster and smoother than the flashier version that opens in Chrome, but retweets and replies work differently.) I use Chrome for the chat. Of course Twitter's live chat system works "better," more like a chat app, for people who use newer browsers. For me, the difference between my chat and ordinary Twitter is that I stay online, watch for new tweets, and respond to them directly during live chat time; I do that only sporadically at other times.

That's already one reason why the Glyphosate Awareness chat isn't livelier. Another reason is that people's glyphosate reactions are very personal and individual, but they tend to be things that people don't actually want to chat about, live, with strangers around the world, unless they happen to be researchers sharing scientific study links. As a result the chat consists primarily of links, mostly but not exclusively to studies published in English or French, with some cross-talk, comparisons, and some discussion of translation issues. People who aren't doing research find a lot to read but they don't necessarily want to chat about it; it's not like one of those political radio shows where each person feeds the others' partisan zeal. And of course it's not at all like those feel-good hashtag pages where people come back daily to look at pretty flower pictures or cheer for champion athletes. Glyphosate Awareness is, by nature, a cold prickle.

So are we "trying to scare people," as one troll claimed? I don't think so. People's emotional reactions are hard to predict or control. Some people may be scared, or enraged. People who really hate their fellow humans might even be exhilarated by learning how much harm glyphosate does to people. My goal is not to leave anyone floundering in a quagmire of any emotional feeling, but to give people information they can use to get more control over the way they feel, physically and also emotionally.

Somewhere Out There someone who's been told that Christians ought to feel cheerful and benevolent all the time is thinking, "What's wrong with me? Why am I having these sudden flashes of anger that's not even giving me the energy to resist or evade any real danger? What unconfessed sin is on my conscience, what demonic spirit is oppressing me," etc. etc. etc. For some people this kind of thinking is deadly serious. For those people it can be lifesaving to know that one of the reactions some people reliably have, every time they're exposed to glyphosate, is a sudden surge of what some people experience as anger, others as anxiety or despair. They do not have to wallow in those emotions. They can choose to fix the facts first, and let the emotional feelings follow.

Obviously a Twitter chat is no substitute for consulting a doctor, but for many people who do consult a doctor, after ruling out the most common causes for stubborn symptoms, it can be useful to consider glyphosate as a factor that's become very common before doctor and patient start worrying about something that's very rare and highly fatal and probably not present in any case. With or without exposure to glyphosate, very few people get non-Hodgkins lymphoma. With or without exposure to glyphosate, a lot of people get chronic fatigue as a symptom of mononucleosis, anemia, or diabetes. After exposure to glyphosate, a lot of people who don't have mononucleosis, anemia, or diabetes show fatigue, malaise, lethargy, sluggishness, even narcolepsy. Once they know this, these people can do something to reduce the amount of productivity they lose to fatigue and malaise. Glyphosate Awareness can and should produce an emotional feeling of resolution and empowerment and relief.

Again, maybe it's due to my early conditioning by the Washington Post, and maybe it's true that people in the rest of the world never learn that a news story about something that's sad but fixable is actually a feel-good news story when it motivates people to fix the problem, but I don't think so. I believe that the emotional effect the Glyphosate Awareness chat has on intelligent adults sounds less like "Ooohhh, woooe" than like "A-ha!" If you guessed that Bayer's corporate shills are not actually concerned about people's emotional moods, so much as about the fact that empowering those people to feel good is as simple as cutting off a stream of income for Bayer, you're absolutely right.

Personally, I have very mixed feelings about all the people who want us to censor or stifle any of our thoughts that "hurt people's feelings." First of all, who are those people, and why are their feelings so much more important than ours? Second, why would they even feel safer if they succeed in stifling the expression of thoughts they don't like, instead of being afraid that the people whose feelings they fear so much might, if denied the chance to talk rationally about their feelings, act them out violently? As a woman I don't like knowing that some men dislike and resent women, but I feel much safer when it's easy to recognize those men and avoid them than I would feel if I'd succeeded in stifling them and found myself married to one of them. But third, most of the time, it seems to me that the crybullies who want us to worry about those mysterious "people's feelings" are actually using hypothetical people's hypothetical feelings for their own immediate profit. Bayer doesn't want people to feel healthy, empowered, and free from any need for name-brand drugs. Bayer wants people to feel happy about popping pills in strings daily--the pill to suppress the painful reaction to chemical pollution, the pill to reduce the side effects from the first pill, the pill to block the primary effects of the second pill, and so ad infinitum.

Bayer would actually benefit from having the ability to suppress any publication of the principles of personal health care, which eliminate any need for most of us ever to swallow a pill. Temperance means no market for Alka-Seltzer. Regularity means a greatly reduced market for aspirin. Emotional intelligence means no market for psychopharmaceuticals. Contemporary pill pushers chased Sylvester Graham from town to town with stones, for telling people that many of them would enjoy the benefits of regularity if they ate whole-grain bread rather than fibre-free pastries. Today's pill pushers would like to stone people who are good models of the benefits of healthy personal choices, too.

So, Bayer bought ad space on Twitter and demanded that Twitter "Do Something" about us horrible people who are "scaring" people away from using glyphosate. Bayer trolls are still circulating those memes about glyphosate being "as safe as salt, less carcinogenic than coffee." Righto. We don't need to censor those memes. We need to find the people who circulate them, surround those people with cameras, and demand that they prove what they say by drinking a litre of "Round-Up." The fun part is that some of those people would live; some wouldn't even have to be rushed to the hospital. Some living things do survive exposure to large amounts of glyphosate; apparently they're the ones that produce defective offspring later. But none of the shills wants to find out exactly how they react to this chemical they want people to think is "safe."

I checked. New Twitter claims to offer all sorts of new fun stuff that Twitter did not originally offer. For the individual user I don't see any of that fun stuff. What I see is, primarily, a clunky format that shoves a bigger, more annoying ad graphic right up under the first tweet on each page. I see a lot of users affirming that nobody but the advertisers likes this. But Twitter is now offering some new benefits for advertisers. That "top view" Twitter now works so hard to show you first, if you don't go to the top of each page and make sure you're seeing tweets in chronological order, buries tweets from your individual friends below masses of sponsored product-friendly drivel spewed out by the advertisers.

Well, there goes Twitter's primary social value--its speeding up individual communications among small groups of private people, about emergencies. There was a time when Twitter had real potential for helping people know, as it might be in a flood situation, which blocks of houses were evacuating, which bridges were out, and which puddles were deep enough to stall a car engine, minute by minute. "Top view" makes that impossible.

Twitter is now indulging advertisers in the delusion that people will continue using social media that are edited to be as bland and product-supportive as commercial television. Give us a break. Twitter might have noticed that a lot of Real Twits do not watch commercial television. On social media that are totally dominated by private, independent people, where advertisers can add their voices to everyone else's on an equal basis but have no power to filter out anti-commercial thoughts, it's possible that people who've cultivated high sales resistance might utter and even listen to honest product-friendly messages. The value of a product-supportive tweet used to be high. The value of a product-supportive tweet on sponsor-censored Twitter is negative.

Twitter could have chosen to take the high road: tell sponsors the Advertising Age is basically over, but they could, on uncensored, unfiltered Twitter, have joined conversations in a polite, respectful way that built a good impression of their brands. This is, of course, NOT done by anything that looks like a TV commercial. NOT EVER. A big irrelevant picture of a product on Twitter is the equivalent of a loud obnoxious person, probably reeking of some weird chemical odor that you suspect is more likely to be a louse treatment than a new perfume, plopping down beside you and your lunch date at a picnic table and bellowing, "Buy my product! Everybody needs my product!" You'd call the police. If the comments on those Twitter ads are any indication, people who've been happily drinking Coca-Cola for years are ready to call the police on the Coca-Cola Company's social media blighter.

There's a right way to use Twitter to make people aware of a product--by joining conversations in a nice way, or posting useful or pretty or funny content with your brand on it--and a wrong way. Twitter's "promoted tweet" ad campaign is definitely the wrong way.

I see ads on my chat page, and...I know it costs money to maintain Twitter, and Jack Dorsey has as much right to make a profit as anyone else has, but this is so not the way to do it. I've tried replying to advertisers by suggesting that they actually join the discussion of Glyphosate Awareness. I'm not at all anti-business, or even anti-profiteering. I'd like to see insurance companies use our hashtag, free of charge just like human beings, to discuss the hazards of using glyphosate or other sprayed "pesticides" and the extent to which using these products should raise the price of insurance. I personally don't like the insurance racket, but I don't see it going away and I can see it accomplishing some good here.

For advertisers, the choice is between (a) spending more money on the sort of intrusive, annoying advertising that will probably never work as well as it did a hundred years ago, and thereby ruining Twitter; or (b) spending very little money, but a little intelligently focussed time, on the sort of modest, inoffensive advertising that may actually help the brand's image, and accepting what Real Twits expect from Twitter.

I've checked this, too, right after Twitter Analytics reported my Twitter "reach" dropping by ninety percent overnight. Some readers remember that, two weeks ago, I advocated that all of us who use Twitter go back through our lists of followers, however many hundreds or thousands of them, and whether or not we have any idea how some of them ever got onto that list, and make direct contact with them--to start planning how, or whether, we'll connect to them in a post-Twitter world. Well, I did that. I've been doing it. I have a few hundred Tweeps left to tag, but I've seen enough to know...Twitter's idea of "Top Tweets" and "Quality Filtering for Notifications" has kept some Tweeps from seeing each other's tweets, it's inflamed the ones who've pounced on SPLC's group flagging and shadowbanning as evidence of political bias, and it's caused quite a few to turn and walk slowly away.

A page of "Top Tweets" that shows just one tweet from a friend, but not necessarily person's most recent one, on top of a big splashy ad graphic eating up half your screen, does not say "Read on; more good stuff below." It says "Just call Tracy to find out what that tweet was about and close this tacky TV-looking window."

Then, suppose you know your friend Tracy does not like live phone calls, so you check your notifications page. Twitter has automatically turned on "quality filtering." That's the sponsors' notion of quality, nothing to do with yours. You can fine-tune this feature if you choose--to edit out individuals who've not disclosed a live phone number to Twitter, individuals who aren't your followers, individuals whom the sponsors have decreed to be less than "relevant, credible, and safe." What about the options for editing out irrelevant ads, annoying videos, big memory-hogging pictures? They're not there. Only individuals can be declared "low quality" and your e-friends, especially if they tweet about topics like independence, frugality, or a True Green lifestyle, have been so declared, and their notifications may be suppressed until you individually exchange tweets with them.

Hah. We "low quality" individuals are Twitter's lifeblood. Sponsors like Bayer, and like Merck (which took the lead in demanding that anyone in favor of respecting people's right to make informed medical choices for themselves be ruled less than "relevant, credible, and safe"), are Twitter's Bacillus tuberculosus.

Private people built Twitter. It exists to connect us to each other. When it stops connecting us to each other and tries to force us back into the position of silent, passive consumer-victims for corporations, Twitter may well cease to exist. And deserve to.

"Oh, Twitter's not censoring you little private peons, just protecting our Corporate Lordships from having to look at your nasty little independent thoughts. You can still tweet to each other. We'll just make sure only your active connections see your messages. Twitter can take our money to give us a complete bully pulpit, because money is what makes things like advertisements for glyphosate 'relevant, credible, and safe,' and broadcast our voices like commercial television, while you can go back to passing notes to each other like fifth-graders."

Nice compromise...um, not.

I'd be interested in your proposed strategies. Mine is, for now:

1. Tweet to, or at least try to tweet to, everyone on your f'list. (Continue, if you've already started.) Make sure they know they need to check, before reading any page on Twitter, that they're reading "Latest tweets" and that their notifications page has "quality filtering" turned OFF.

2. Expect limited response. Most people didn't notice that "quality filtering" was installed to block their receiving your notifications. They just noticed that their "top tweets" page had become boring and figured they'd outgrown Twitter. Some of the followers whose names you don't recognize may have actually left Twitter long ago. Some of them may genuinely be what you consider "low quality" Twits--people whose Twitter accounts are dedicated to a single purpose that you don't want to endorse, like brands for products you don't buy.

3. For people with whom you want to maintain contact, share a link to a page with your e-mail and real-world mailing addresses on it.

4. If you've invested in Twitter's success in any way, start divesting now. Plan a more efficient e-free communication and networking strategy for the post-Twitter world. Social media sites that rule private individuals "low quality" are not going to last long. We can still use Twitter--but we need to use it to begin building networks that will outlast it.

5. Oh, for what it's worth...While Twitter's been not only isolating all of us "low quality" private people as a matter of policy, but putting me specifically in "Twitter Time Out" when Bayer's cyberbullies squealed, my f'list has actually grown. Yours might, too. Let's keep each other's f'lists growing and, if the advertisers don't agree to a revised contract that automatically defines their tweets as "low quality," actively promotes ours as "What You Might Have Missed During Twitter's Moment of Temporary Insanity," and imposes a lifetime ban on any advertiser who's called for censorship, the next thing we do, let's block all the advertisers.



This Amazon link has been brought to you by an inspirational figure who wasn't always as unstoppable as he hoped, and some of his ideas were dead wrong, but he was a great guy to work for. And presumably still is.

Earth-Friendly Gifts for a Green Mother's Day

Back in the old AC archives are two Mothers Day pieces I wrote in consultation with my own mother, when sponsors asked about gifts for "Green" mothers and for bird-watching mothers. Mine was both so she was full of ideas. Here, back by a local lurker's request, is a revised, updated, illustrated Top Ten List with clickable links you can use to shop for any Green mothers you may know. Not all of these suggestions involve shopping. Some Green mothers like that.

(Someone who'd formed a habit, or just had to ask, asked me... "Mother" here includes your mother, your children's mother, your foster mother, adoptive mother, grandmother, mother-in-law, foster or adoptive child's natural mother, etc. Grandmothers are mothers too. Aunts, like fathers, uncles, sons, and daughters who don't have babies of their own, are not mothers. Though this list is not gender-specific on this list, my feeling is that Mothers Day is biological-role-specific...well, as an aunt I think it's a day for giving not receiving. We non-mothers can receive presents on other days! For example, if you use these precise links to buy stuff on Amazon, and resist the temptation to shop around, I earn a few pennies in commission, which will eventually add up to a payout from Amazon. I should live so long. But you get the idea. No need to feel bad if you shop around.)

1. Green mothers garden. Mothers Day falls after the optimum planting time for some plants in some places, but gardeners' shopping lists are endless. Gardeners can always use natural-material gardening gloves, plants, seeds, giftcards from their favorite nurseries and garden catalogues, herbal insect repellents, straw hats, cotton shirts and jeans...

Keep Calm T-Shirt

by Ecologicalstore


Pause for a Store Review: When I was growing up we always used to receive seed catalogues from lots of different companies, including Stark Bros. We ordered several kinds of plants and trees from the Stark family business. Now that Dad's gone and Mother's semi-retired, the fruit I'm still picking is coming from our Stark Bros seedlings. Not all of them thrived, but some apple, raspberry, and blueberry sprouts really took off...and paid off, over the past forty years! Cheers!

2. Even Green mothers get tired, even when they garden. (Some of them agree with Suzette Haden Elgin, who was a polio survivor, about using gardening as a symptom-buster. For anyone living with chronic pain or other symptoms, your symptom-buster is something that's easy enough and delightful enough that you can use it to tell when to ignore symptoms and when to go to bed or call the doctor.)



Tired gardeners might appreciate a coupon for free hours of help with gardening chores, or a massage for muscles that have been tired by too much gardening on those first irresistible days in April.

3. Green mothers enjoy nature. You never have to spend a lot of money on a treat for a True Greenie. They enjoy walks in the park with family (or friends), and may have storage room for another field guide...birds, trees, flowers, herbs, mushrooms, or even rocks.



4. All mothers appreciate understanding. Green mothers do everything that television teaches children is un-cool. They do their own chores, using hand tools. They wear old clothes until the seams fall apart. They buy things secondhand. They make young children recycle household junk into toys instead of buying snazzy new toys advertised on TV. They cook at home, with leftovers and "ugly" garden produce yet.

Around age twelve most young people go through a stage where they really feel embarrassed by the fact that they're still children. Apparently some communities don't teach them to feel ashamed of this childish feeling. I could wish that more adults had stood together to give more of my generation more of the message I'd absorbed, even as a teenager: "A person who is disloyal to his parents at 12 will be disloyal to his country at 21. If your parents belong to the Flat Earth Society, as a decent human being living in their home, you should go to meetings with them."

Anyway, if you've ever expressed embarrassment about the Green things your mother used to do, Mothers Day would be a good time to demonstrate that you've matured past that sort of thing now. Go to a yard sale or charity store with your mother. Help her entertain the next generation of your family with puppets made from soap bottles and finger-painted sheets of newspaper. Help carry out her recycling.

5. If you have the appropriate skills you might be able to help your Green mother with a big project she's not been able to do or afford on her own. Old-school Granola Greenies drive old clunkers if they drive anything. Proper maintenance can reduce the carbon footprints of those clunkers. Instead of preaching at them about that old minivan they keep to haul all the grandchildren, or all of their Sunday School class, around town, try tuning it up, cleaning the pipes, changing the filters, recycling worn tires and putting on new ones with fresh treads.

6. You can help "Green up" the house, too...just by being an extra pair of hands, but even more if you've acquired special skills and/or money. Mothers Day is not necessarily too late to help with "spring cleaning" chores like caulking, tightening, or replacing window screens to reduce the cost of climate control, or having storm windows and screens built to fit odd-shaped windows. My mother avoided mentioning expensive projects because none of her children or grandchildren is wealthy, but if you are, why not buy your Green mother a Prius? Or remodel the bathroom and install a water-free toilet.



7. Green mothers usually don't want a lot of "gift junk," especially things like scented soap (they don't like petrochemical fragrances) or new clothes (they wonder whether they'll live long enough to wear out the clothes they already own). There are, however, things even Greenies have to replace. After confirming that your Green mother is likely to use up her existing supplies, you might look for recycled stationery or a new tote bag spun from recycled plastic bottles.



(The picture-linking widget isn't working properly. Click here.)



(If you search for "recycled stationery" on Amazon, you'll get masses of results.)

8. Sometimes it's the thought that counts. Show your Green mother that you've learned some of her tips and tricks. Help pass them on to her grandchildren.

9. While younger Greenies tend to be wild about computers, older Greenies have reservations about anything that's made from plastic, runs on electricity, and emits radiation. They prefer real books. If your Green mother is still adding books to her collection, find out what she does and doesn't have, or want.

One book your Green mother will be glad to have is the one you compile for her. You don't have to be a writer, or writer's assistant, although if you are your mother will probably proudly display your books. Just search for things that interest her on the Internet, print them out in nice clear large type on both sides of the paper, and put it all together in a recycled three-ring binder. (These "naked binders" are intentionally left bare so you can make your own jackets and labels.)



10. Spend quality time doing something earth-friendly on Mothers Day. Walk to a nature park, eat a healthy home-cooked picnic, sing old songs, and count birds and wildflowers together. Bake whole-grain bread together. Plant a tree.

Belated Tortie Tuesday Post: Serena Modifies Tradition

I didn't plan to post anything today until I checked the blog notifications and realized I'd left a cliff-hanger hanging far too long. What's happened to Serena and the four baby kittens?

Three of them have names, is what. The fourth one hasn't really accepted a name yet. They survived a few days of massive upsetness, then started eating kibble and choosing parts of the sand pit. They've learned to cluster around the door to be brought indoors after dinner, cluster just inside the door to race outdoors for breakfast. That's a lot when we consider how much the fluffballs have had to learn. Eventually, after other vital survival skills, they may learn to answer to their names consistently and keep their cute little claws out of people's hands. They are still working on Danger Avoidance and Unbearable Cuteness.

There really ought to be photos of these kittens by now. There aren't, because it's April and I've been out enjoying all the beautiful phenology. Dogwoods, redbuds, four kinds of violets, some bloodroot, a few Bidens, ground-ivy, cleavers and bedstraw (I'll post about those if funded in time), cardinals bright and cheery as ever...Wild roses are the latest threat to the Rose of Sharon, or Northern Hibiscus, bushes and I'm about ready to let the roses have that space, if they weren't so prickly and provoking. I had to prune them quite aggressively after the Big Wet Snow in December. Wild roses like being pruned aggressively. Whack them off at ground level and, in spring, they surge up into your face again.

I am considering planting tomatoes myself this year. That ought to be a happy thought. It's not, because my mother always was the tomato plant whisperer; I had a few tomato plants to practice on, as a child, but now the thought of buying them and setting them out is keyed to the thought "because Mother may not be able to do that."

And year-old Queen Cat Serena has carried on an old Patchnose Family Tradition, only she's modified it in a modern nonsexist way.

Patchnose, as regular readers may remember, was a genuine alley cat, found living feral in an alley, wild as a bird. When her big, bold kitten Mackerel set out to train a child to feed his family, humans realized that Patchnose and her kittens were the very rare social cat family where the father, Big Mac, was actually providing for his sickly mate and too many babies. When they were delivered to the Cat Sanctuary, Mac made a pet of me overnight, then set about persuading his mother and siblings that it was safe to eat food I set out for them.

Patchnose didn't live through the winter, but young Mac was another dutiful, devoted male cat who fed and baby-sat kittens.

I didn't interfere with the social cat family's own plans for themselves, much, over the years, because a social cat family is so special. Unaltered females did indeed time and space out the birth of kittens--it looked as if they were doing it consciously. Nursing each other's kittens was their most obvious technique. They have others. I counted...some HSUS alarmist posted, a few years ago, that one breeding pair of cats would, in nine years, produce hundreds of thousands if not a million kittens. Hah. Patchnose and Big Mac have seven living descendants I know about for sure (Samantha and Traveller aren't their descendants), plus the four new kittens, and nine about whom I'm not so sure.

Every year there've been kittens--some born to resident cats, and some delivered by people who've heard that the resident cats would foster other cats' kittens. (BUT ASK FIRST!!!) Male cats in the Patchnose Family have been patient and gentle when unable to avoid kittens, but not exactly devoted fathers, since Mac's time.

Every year, beginning at the end of the summer when Patchnose was weaning a second litter of kittens, the Queen Cat has called half-weaned kittens to join her on my lap while nursing. No male cat has ever been part of this family tradition.

Traveller is not related to the Patchnose Family, nor is he related to Serena's kittens. He's only a half-grown, not-quite-one-year-old kitten himself. But nobody will ever convince him (or Serena) that he's not Serena's brother. If he remembers having once had a different mother, or having been born a hundred miles away, he's never let it bother him. He doesn't seem especially intelligent on his own, but he does whatever Serena tells him.

He is also the cuddliest kitten ever. He acts as if he thought the only reason why humans sit down is to provide laps for kittens to snuggle onto. (Given a selection of laps, he likes to shed on each lap in turn.)

And so, when Serena resumed caring for her recovering kittens, after a few days of nonverbally telling me "See if you can do anything for them, I can't"...I came home at the end of the day and sat down on the porch. Traveller and Serena came up to join me, and the kittens came out from their hiding place, and Serena told them they could join us. Traveller was rolling around on my lap. Serena was sitting beside me in a cozy yet dignified way.

The kittens crawled up on my lap and purred and snuggled...with Traveller. Serena was leaning against me but not sitting on my lap. She's become a little more affectionate, due to the prolactin surge, since giving birth but she is not, never was, and never will be a cuddly cat. Her usual ways of showing affection are still slapping or chomping and bounding away, waving her tail like a flag--although she does that less often now that she has babies to look after.

After a minute or two of family bonding time in this position, Serena let her babies nurse, briefly, while she lay against the side of my leg. Traveller continued to rub his head and sides against me and grip my fingertips between his paw and toe pads.

He watches the kittens when Serena isn't watching them, just as Mac did. He's been known to cuddle up beside them or even lick them. He draws the line, "meowing" and walking away, only if a kitten tries to nurse on him.

All four kittens are basically white with spots. Two have light grey spots that give them rather pretty faces, one has extensive black spots that make him look like Felix the cartoon cat, and one has charcoal-grey spots that make it look utterly ridiculous. I call it Black Stache, as in this book...



Felix and Stache have a sister, Swimmer, so called from one of her misadventures. We don't know that she'll ever want to swim again, but we know for sure that she can. Then there's the other sibling, whose gender is uncertain and who has yet to respond to anything it's been called.

Photos will appear soon.

Committees of Correspondence

(Long rant, referring back to several topics with which regular readers are familiar, by way of explanation of a call to action. Feel free to scroll to the bottom. If the last few paragraphs make sense, congratulations, you've moved beyond Level 101 of ths blog. If not, use the headings to scroll back up to the parts of which you missed something.)

Censorship on Social Media

Unlike loathsome Facebook...

https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/04/facebook-advocates-government-regulation-online-speech/

Twitter doesn't censor. I have spent several online hours in committees discussing why Twitter must avoid any kind of overt censorship, no matter how many alleged people scream that any opposition to their point of view might catch the eye of a dangerous lunatic and be involved in the ravings of the next Prozac Dementia homicide-suicide case. People who are violently insane may blame the Republicans; they may blame the Democrats; they may blame the weather, or the moon, or what they distinctly heard a rock tell them to do. We don't censor Republicans or Democrats, nor do we try to destroy rocks, because of this. We lock up the poor lost souls, if we get to them before they kill themselves, and pray that psychiatrists can find ways to deactivate the violence circuits in their brains while leaving them enough working neurons to sort socks in a Goodwill warehouse, although so far this is not guaranteed and it might be more humane just to kill them...In any case, we recognize that ideas millions of responsible adults can discuss and debate without even resorting to profanity are not to be blamed when people who are not responsible adults become violent.

My stake in Twitter owes something to a mistake (long story, not available online) but, after years of not doing Twitter and then years of using it only every few months, I have acquired a small stake in Twitter. I've seen that its fast-paced, headlines-only format, which initially seemed silly, can have a really valuable part in mass communications--in emergencies, e.g., where Twits can track weather disasters and use any working cell phones to find and help survivors. I care personally about keeping this site from going the way of either Facebook, which is simply rotten to the core, or Freedom Connector (the one I remember fondly) or other social media sites that self-destructed by targeting only one side of a debate.

There have been social sites that protected people from any kind of disagreement by advertising that they were there for one group or another. Freedom Connector was "for" Tea Parties; it fell apart when (1) some Tea Parties realized how diverse the appeal of "Taxed Enough Already" really was--I like that, but some people couldn't handle it, and (2) the rest realized that almost all Tea Parties are made up of taxpayers who have jobs, most of which don't have titles like "Social Media Consultant" and don't allow a lot of time for online socializing with random new acquaintances. I remember spending an hour or two with a site that was "for" Christians, long dead for similar reasons, and actually doing a few live chats at a site that was "for" Republicans. (No, I wasn't needling them; I was chatting about live networking opportunities. That would have been a cool site, had it survived.) There've been social sites for left-wingers and many other interest groups too. I've actually been paid to play hostess on a few; they all paid other hosts too, and that's not why most of them have fallen apart and the ones that still survive without paid hosts aren't growing. There are a few truly great blogs--Making Light used to be one, and Ozarque's while she was living, and The Blaze while Glenn Beck was still there, and Scott Adams' blog before he went video-only, and Return To Order for conservative Catholics, and who else remembers Matt Drudge and Brad Hicks?--that attract enough like-minded people to come back enough times that e-friendships form. I've wished this blog would become one of them. But in the absence of a really good celebrity writer who consistently delivers interesting content that keeps the chat going and personally moderates the comments, these like-minded community sites do not become miniature social sites. The social media sites that work have to keep the doors open and let everyone, including rude kids and Flat Earthers, find their own social circles.

(Before anyone says "If you, writer known as Priscilla King, were going around these sites clobbering people with your opinions, no wonder..."--Hello? This is my site. My job here is to air my own opinions. As a paid hostess on other people's sites, my job is/was to get other people to share their opinions. I found out firsthand at what point each site started automatically blocking responses to comment like "LOL" or "Dittos" or "Tell us more?")

Vaccination

So, recently on Twitter people claimed that panic about a measles outbreak was making them feel justified in demanding a social media ban on "anti-vax" content.

I propose as a general Meta-Rule for all social media:

THE SIDE CALLING FOR CENSORSHIP OF OPPOSING OPINIONS IS ADMITTING IT CAN'T WIN A RATIONAL DEBATE, AND CAN SAFELY BE CONSIDERED "WRONG."

The "pro-vax" corporate shills are so misguided they don't even notice that there's a wide range of opinions about measles vaccinations. I actually favor them--only for couples who are trying to become parents without having had the disease or the vaccine as kids. Fetuses can be damaged by the effects of live measles, mumps, or even puny little rubella virus inside the mother's body. For most of us who've already been born, by far the healthiest way to become immune to these "diseases" is to have them as a child. I had the diseases, then I had the vaccine, and it happened to be a contaminated batch of vaccine, and I would recommend the diseases over the effects I got from the vaccine to anybody.

Only in 1985 was MMR vaccine linked to an especially virulent form of mononucleosis that made masses of young people ill for a year or longer. I had acute hepatitis, with cramping, nausea, weight loss, and jaundice, into 1987; I remained jaundiced and asexual through the late 1980s. People who had MMR vaccine in other years did not have that reaction. They had other ones, which Robert Kennedy has chosen to investigate and document. I'm not employed by him, although I'd like to be, and don't presume to claim him as an e-friend, although I'd like to do. I am as proud of him as a previous generation of Irish-Americans were of his late father and uncle. Click here to see why:

https://childrenshealthdefense.org/news/nyc-mandatory-measles-vaccination-violates-ny-state-law-chd-challenges-legality/

But there are true anti-vaxxers--Orthodox Jews, Jehovah's Witnesses, members of the defunct Lord's Covenant Church in which I committed my life to Christ in 1978--who believe that having any vaccination is wrong because it involves contact with extracts from other living creature's blood. In the United States they have a constitutional right to act on that belief without prejudice.

Then there are those who want to use a risk-benefits analysis. In connection with vaccinations I think Ben Carson's explanation of the RBA is valuable...



For what it's worth, Dr. Carson says that for most people the MMR vaccine presents a merely acceptable risk. I think if he'd had it in 1985 he'd feel otherwise, but I appreciate his explanation of the risks and benefits of vaccines anyway. I would renew my vaccinations, or encourage a child to have vaccinations, against a highly fatal disease for which a mostly safe vaccine exists, like cholera or polio. I would not recommend that most people bother about vaccinations for trivia like measles or flu.

And among the RBA crowd there's also a division between those who generalize about vaccines and diseases merely by pathogen species, and those who are interested and expert enough to make distinctions among specific batches of vaccines. Sometimes some people actually feel qualified to tell working parents, "Don't let your child have Vaccine A, which is being used at his school. Bring little Timmy to a clinic that gives Vaccine B, which is safer." If I were a parent I'd think it was worth the trouble to investigate these people's qualifications further before telling little Timmy he ought to have a vaccine, but sometimes they are right; if I'd had that MMR shot at Loma Linda University, or maybe at Radford where the high school guidance counsellor thought I ought to have been, rather than at Andrews University I might have had no side effects whatsoever.

Then there are further distinctions of opinion among those withholding our support from a particular kind of vaccination...I'm always irked by the simplistic "Vaccines cause autism" meme. The overdiagnosis of "autism" among children who do in fact have impaired vision, hearing, or mobility, and may be painfully shy, but do not lack empathy, ticks me off. I don't think it helps either those children, or the young man I once met who is likely to fall over if spoken to because sounds disturb his hypersensitive inner ears, to use "autism" as a synonym for "brain damage of any kind." Some vaccine reactions may cause fevers, which may either cause or aggravate brain damage of whatever kind. Some vaccine reactions may or may not do as much damage to infants as prenatal exposure to measles, mumps, and rubella, alone or together, might have done to them as fetuses. Much remains to be learned and although it seems obvious that vaccine manufacturers and government offices are suppressing valuable data, because releasing that data would create financial liability for the government that mandated vaccines, "Vaccines cause autism" is an overgeneralization that's easily refuted and unlikely to help.

But the pro-vaxxers want to suppress all rational discussion and just force social media to promote their (profit-motivated) position to the exclusion of all others! Which of these things just doesn't belong? "Pro-vaxxers call for censorship? Therefore they are wrong! What else is wrong with them? Why are they so UN-AMERICAN?" we need to be chanting in chorus, loud enough and long enough that Big Pharma denounces its own scapegoats and the accounts from which the calls for censorship came are deleted and purged. If they were stupid enough to use their real-world names, the corporate shills should have to petition the courts to change those so they can be considered for some sort of job, if only pumping gas, during the rest of their lives.

Feminism

Twitter showed a dangerous level of susceptibility to censorship, admittedly due to someone's personal emotional feelings, in caving to a demand that people who bicker about other people's "pronouns of choice" be banned on Twitter. I posted about that last year; no need to repeat that rant. So far I've not seen a huge surge of support for my own position that people who use the F-word (the other one, besides "Facebook") as a threat or curse should be banned from Twitter. I say that as a feminist. If Twitter refuses to ban anyone who posts that, then it should at least also protect those who may choose to post, in reply, "Well, snip you." Nufsed.

I've added more recently that, in addition to calling out those who offensively pat, pinch, or tickle young people (not always women), or call them by pejorative names, and whine "But there's nothing sexual about it! That's the way I touch or speak to my children!", feminists need to call out men who invoke the "She's Crazy/Stupid/Incompetent" meme. Any aspersion cast by a male on a female's competence should evoke a loud, long, shrill chorus:

"He's a fool, a sexist fool! Shut up, fool! Go home! Get out of social media! Whose son is this, and why did his mother let him out? The only worthwhile thing he has to say is 'I humbly beg your gracious pardon, Ma'am,' for at least the next ten years! Does he have a job, and if so why? Is he in college, and if so why? He's so obviously unfit to be among adults!"

This is, of course, a counter-reaction to the resurgence of sexist bigotry documented here...Tina Fey is very witty, but the problem is not actually funny.



GlyphosateAwareness (and its Live Chat on Twitter)

So perhaps that's why the glyphosate shills picked a typically female name for the one that whined on Twitter recently that "since we've got a way to hush up the dangerous anti-vaxxers on social media, maybe now Twitter can do something about the anti-glyphosate..."

I was in the middle of a celiac reaction when I read that, and if a real woman had been in front of me, saying that, I seriously doubt that I would have been able to ask her, seriously, rationally, and empathetically, what had caused her to spout such a toxic-waste idea. "Y'want censorship? Go to China!" would have been a reasonable thing for anyone who is not an aunt, a Christian, and a chat moderator to have said...but I felt something like the surge of real, violent anger, followed by massive depression, that can be a symptom of fatal but rare multiple myeloma when it's not a symptom of ordinary hypertension and/or celiac sprue and/or some other digestive system disorders. People who have that feeling can and do become violent. I would warn all readers against mentioning the mere idea of censoring Glyphosate Awareness in the presence of any Irish celiac. Violence is not what we need. However good it might feel at the time. The pro-censorship fools are the ones who need to be in the padded cells.

Well...Devin Nunes' call for counter-censorship seems sorely misguided. The trouble with mandating protection for two official parties is that a lot of issues are not being adequately addressed by either of those parties. Things like #GlyphosateAwareness are the property of either party, neither, both, or however other many other parties may be out there.

But I saw that Nunes was right about one thing. I'd wondered where some of my Tweeps had been lately, and some people might have wondered about me, before my Twitter activity chart took a nosedive. New Twitter has in fact rolled out a subtle form of de facto pro-corporate censorship.

It's called "Top view." Up to this year, when you opened a page on Twitter you saw tweets--from people you follow on your own feed, from individual Twits on our profile pages, from all users of hashtags on the hashtag pages--in chronological order with the newest tweets first. When you came to something that didn't make sense, you could scroll down and see it in its context. But now Twitter has started mechanically rating "Top" tweets, picking for you the one tweet you see above the first irrelevant paid ad, then the next few between that and the next irrelevant paid ad...and Twitter has indeed admitted allowing its paying sponsors to determine how those "Top" tweets are picked. It's not in order of their popularity with actual readers, as I initially thought when I thought defaulting to "Top view" was merely annoying and confusing. It's to make sure you see sponsor-approved content and miss those independent opinions that companies like Bayer may be paying to keep you from sharing.

Celiacs Are Not Alone

It's to keep somebody like a poor lonely celiac student in California from realizing that (1) true celiacs really are rare, and (2) we got our lovely market for gluten-free food from people who actually aren't even sensitive to natural wheat gluten but have pseudo-celiac or other painful reactions to glyphosate, and (3) if he, as a celiac, wants more food he can eat to be sold at his school, he needs to be using that natural alliance with #GlyphosateAwareness, because glyphosate-laced food may be gluten-free but it'll still make him sick, leaving him one of the poor duped celiacs who seriously believe that what we inherited is not just a gene that should shape our food choices but a horrible chronic disease that may or may not be helped by following a severely restricted diet and whining and wailing for more subsidized painkillers, or gene therapy, or who knows what-all...

I call foul. The celiac genotype in no way excludes other genes that really are lethal, and that we know less about how people might be able to live with. (Among other things it may be one of a combination of genes that, together, produce susceptibility to schizophrenia.) But those of us who did not inherit other, more lethal genes along with our celiac gene can be models of excellent health--when other people don't keep on poisoning us with glyphosate. Growing up celiac forces us to overtrain so, like the survivors of physical therapy who go on to compete in the Special Olympics, we can and should enjoy super strength, super immunity. I am, I did, and for many years I was the leading local model of those things.

On this topic I'm not entitled to clobber people with my opinions. Who needs opinions? I am entitled to speak the truth in thunder tones. I host the #GlyphosateAwareness chat because this is the topic I own by natural right of inheritance. From a Great-Grandmother Susan from Ireland whose long, miserable life ended at the age of 103 when then unscented gas leaked into her home, where she lived alone with a "modern" gas stove. She was living alone at 103 because (1) she was no fun to be around, if not complaining of one minor health problem then complaining of three others, and (2) she was, nevertheless, still competent to live alone. And her daughter, a rodeo queen called Texas Ruby, and her daughters, my mother and "Aunt Dotty," and I, and some of The Nephews and some of our cousins on that side, all look just like her. Faces considered classically handsome or beautiful when we're healthy, ugly and pitiable when we're not, identifiable in Mother's box of old photos only by dates or background items to determine whose photo is whose--the baby pictures aren't even identifiable by gender. Smashing successes in early life that ran up against chronic, intractable minor disabilities at age 30. Until I, the writer known as Priscilla King, broke that "old family curse." Dang right I'm entitled to enjoy a long and healthy old age, and even brag about it.

And, if a pro-censorship fool were to start spewing toxic waste here in the cafe, feeling safe just because s/he is bigger than I am, I'd be entitled to pick person up, carry person out, and drop person on the curb. Not to be violent, of course. Nobody has a right to be violent. Violence is a wrong not a right. But just to show that nature has indeed given me, age about 50, height about 5'4", the right to lift and carry more than my own weight...when really violent people are not making me sick.

I would know more about this than the poor fools and tools in the corporate lobbies. A lot more. I say it's time we acknowledged that the celiac gene is a rare gene, a trait, a feature...oh, like polydactylism, or having concentric circles of different colors in your eyes. There is no reason why the celiac gene should be more inconvenient to us than those other genes. People with two-tone eyes may waste a lot of time talking about a feature that's become old and stale to them, as do we, but neither they nor we need to waste time feeling sick. The celiac gene simply refuses to digest certain things as food. Well, every human body refuses to digest certain things as food. Nobody can safely eat rocks, or nails, or lawn grass. Celiacs can simply add wheat to that list and get on with our lives. If people agree that shared meals need to contain natural foods that don't contain wheat or wheat products, celiacs can even share meals with other people.

Instead of which we're being specifically targeted, for what can fairly be called #IrishGenocide, by corporations that want to tell you that "the science" means it doesn't matter how sick their very profitable products are making some people, since each of those people's reactions to glyphosate is, considered all by itself, so rare that "statistically" it's "insignificant." That is: only a few people (and dogs, cats--like my four kittens still suffering at home today--and rabbits, and birds, and fish, and bees) have pseudo-celiac reactions to glyphosate, although pseudo-celiac reactions to glyphosate are at least twenty times more common than true celiac reactions to wheat.

(How do we know this? Numbers! Those numbers the corporate "science" types want to ignore! When even in Ireland only 1 out of 10,000 people develops true celiac sprue, usually late in life, while in a glyphosate-poisoned world as many as 1 out of 4 or 5 White people, plus substantial numbers of non-White people, are "gluten-sensitive," that tells us something, doesn't it kiddies? And when those "gluten-sensitive" people are reporting that, in certain European countries where glyphosate is banned or used in a less reckless way, they can eat wheat without being sick...that tells us all we need to know. No more animals need to suffer to explain why this is the case. And if you want to know who deserves not censorship but actual jail time for committing acts of senseless violence, imagine how a pseudo-celiac reaction feels to a kitten who's not even developed the ability to excrete its bodywaste without external help...all that gas and no ability to... Hard time!)

Nevertheless, most people don't have pseudo-celiac reactions to glyphosate. Lucky them...maybe. Some people have sinus allergies, or other respiratory reactions like asthma. (I had asthma, once, after walking several miles down a freshly sprayed road; I don't usually have respiratory reactions to glyphosate. Most people exposed to large amounts of glyphosate have combinations of reactions, over and above their usual, default reaction.) Some develop skin rashes, especially after skin contact with sprayed plants or food. Some have kidney reactions that involve the nervous system and can include narcolepsy or acute fatigue. Some become paralyzed. Some have cognitive or emotional reactions. Some may survive long enough to develop cancer, which either kidney reactions or celiac-type reactions help to promote, or to give birth to badly deformed children.

I've watched a patient-who-doesn't-look-geriatric (who uses glyphosate, herself, and stopped speaking to me when I told her that was probably the cause of her lingering "complications from flu" she had years ago) come out walking like a 25-year-old model, inhale glyphosate vapors, immediately reel and stagger, become confused, and have to be guided to sit down until someone could take her home. (I wouldn't have presumed to offer that kind of insight to someone that much older, even a close friend, if the sight hadn't been so unmistakable and unforgettable and shocking.) 

The celiac reaction to glyphosate seems to be the most common not because it is, but because it comes on fast, goes away fast, and is unique, not part of an overall reaction people have to lots of other things. When I stood in a crowd of mostly middle-aged and senior citizens who were exposed to glyphosate vapors, and observed their reaction, by far the most common complaint was that people who had felt fine and been enjoying lovely spring weather, earlier that morning, suddenly felt "old" and "tired." The younger set, observing the basic immune reaction that produces "colds" among their coevals, started theorizing about "something going around." There was also a lot of idiocy about "allergies" to spring flowers that hadn't been bothering people until some moron decided to spray poison on some of them.

That was the day I realized I was not alone, or even in a minority. Glyphosate is doing most people harm, in a wide variety of ways. Each individual reaction seems to be a minority...but the overwhelming majority of all life forms exposed to glyphosate, even at low levels if those levels are sustained over time, are showing painful physical reactions. We're now seeing smaller animals die out. Insect and bird counts are dropping into the danger zones. At the same time we're seeing animals that used to be considered hardy and easy to care for, like house cats, suddenly become fragile creatures that have to be nursed through acute illnesses almost every year. Vets are now classifying cats' recurring illnesses as losses of immunity to a virus, but very few cats lost immunity to that virus before glyphosate levels reached their current height! And we all either know that we feel more than ten years "older" than we were ten years ago, or know people who do, or both.

When I started researching the connection between my glyphosate exposures and my celiac reactions, I had some doubts about glyphosate causing birth defects in livestock in South America. Currently I have some reservations about the claim that it's functioning as a "xenoestrogen" unbalancing older people's sex hormones. I started the #GlyphosateAwareness chat because I'm sure that some of the allegations being made about the harmfulness of glyphosate have to be mistaken. But along came the Ramazzini study to show that glyphosate causes birth defects among the offspring of individuals who don't show painful reactions to it, themselves...I wouldn't be surprised if the claim that glyphosate is unbalancing people's sex hormones could be refuted. Neither would I be surprised if it could be proved. We need more real observations from unbiased people, and at this point I think we've seen enough animal studies and need to confine "the science" to reports from human patients and "anecdotal" observations of animals. We know glyphosate is harmful to all living creatures. What remains to be learned, about how and why it's been more harmful than we already know for sure that it's been, should be learned from those living with any effects that linger after the much-needed ban goes into effect.

Bayer: Crazy Like a Fox

And corporations like Bayer...I seriously suspect Werner Bauman and his henchmen, er um corporate board, are trying to divest their own assets and bankrupt Bayer in time for them to get out before actually paying any damages to the millions of people they've harmed. Their clinging to glyphosate, with their ludicrous trotting out of the Monsanto-approved studies that actually condemn glyphosate to scream "But it doesn't necessarily cause cancer," is...not something any serious attempt to market any brand could hope to survive. My guess is that Bayer is planning its own bankruptcy, the way my husband planned his bankruptcy when his ex's reaction to his possibly-positive test for prostate cancer was to ask for a divorce; Bayer executives are likely choosing their aliases, forging their documentation, and working on long-term visas or changes of citizenship, as I type.

I would like very much for this summer not to be another season of sickness for me and my close relatives, and death for our friends, animal and human, like last summer was. Even the #GlyphosateAwareness campaign is giving me only limited grounds for hope. But I'd like for more people to be saying this to the makers, sellers, and too-stupid-to-live continuing users of glyphosate products. One more summer like the last one isn't going to kill most of us--it's just going to make us angrier. And celiacs, though rare, are already angry, we're already Irish, and we're coming after you with all our celiac toughness. Start running to the rocks and screaming "Fall on us" now!

How do I know Bayer (and the other corporations lined up behind them) are going down, and know it? By their use of this "can't answer them, so make a lot of noise and try to drown them out" strategy. I never expected #GlyphosateAwareness to be the sort of favorite hashtag Twits visit daily, like #TortieTuesday or #ChooseCuteness or #GreenBayPackers. I expected most of my followers to show strong preferences for any and every other topic, which they do. Nobody--including me--enjoys #GlyphosateAwareness. Even when my body forces me to think about it, I personally feel better when I think, read, talk, and tweet about cute puppy pictures. But the enemy, the people who are actively making you ill and me sick, are feeling a need to censor this topic!

Well, WOO-HOO and YEE-HAAAA!

The Glyphosate Awareness chat has never seen a lot of traffic. Most of the people who've been personally invited to it have declined to post on this topic; I know some of them have read the hashtag from time to time, but never participated in the chat. This is as it should be. So why would a massively wealthy corporation even bother to suppress an unpopular, uncomfortable chat?

Because they can't answer one dang thing I've said.

We've watched them try.

We've watched them fail.

One really smart, cute young fellow, who I hope has abandoned glyphosate by now, tried drawing me into a very erudite discussion in French. Well, by now tout le monde sait que j'ecris francais comme une vache espagnole, everyone knows I write French like a Spanish cow, I mangle their lovely language...but actually, the more erudite a discussion gets in any of the European languages, the easier it is for speakers of the other European languages to read. Tweeps watched me beat the kid at his own game as handily as even Venus Williams could still beat you or me at tennis.

Then another French guy, who's still tweeting in aid of glyphosate but has stopped replying to me, tried to use the documents Monsanto used on our Environmental Protection Association, only without the bribery. We made figurative hash of him (though not a Twitter hashtag, because he doesn't deserve one) in a few hours.

Then a bunch of alleged farmers in Australia tweeted hate at us for a day or two. We took them down fast.

Then a pro-glyphosate Twit asked me to discuss glyphosate on a radio show. You're on, I said. I've heard no more from him. One day watching me smack down pro-glyphosate whines with indisputable facts was all he cared to see. I could destroy his arguments on radio, and I would, and he knows it.

Then Kevin Folta, who's actually respected in some circles--or was--got into it, and the poor nerd regressed so far that, in his confusion, he emitted an ad hominem (or ad feminam) sexist insult to Stephanie Seneff. He's still on Twitter but he's avoiding me.

So, when all else fails--if you want to build a corporate brand, you drop glyphosate like a live grenade, which it is; but if you want to destroy a corporation just as soon as you can get your personal assets out of it, you roll out a little money and call for corporate censorship!

Sinners, run to the rocks and say, "Rocks and mountains please fall on me!"



(Actually the misquote comes from the musical...whatever.)

And So, in Conclusion... 

We are winning, Tweeps. We may be reeling and bleeding, but we are winning.

We need to share the good news; and because these corporations are interconnected and it has taken a lot of corporate funding to sustain the Internet, we can't count on the Internet to do it.

In the American Revolution, there was no Internet; people were widely separated from each other and spoke different dialects--and, in the case of Pennsylvania, languages! Nevertheless, plans and alliances were made by what called themselves Committees of Correspondence, people who hand-wrote and hand-copied letters to lists of friends. These lists branched out like trees and united a population of individuals who'd never seen or spoken to one another.

On Twitter, after reading Devin Nunes' helpful complaint and confirming that it's true, I asked yesterday whether we should promote Glyphosate Awareness by buying ads or by deserting Twitter. I woke up this morning thinking, "Neither, of course!" Here's a better strategy:

1. Right now, although Twitter doesn't make it as easy as it used to be to print lists of our followers, Twitter does make it easy to find our followers--in chronological order. Go to your  profile. Open your f'list. Scroll all the way down through all 200 or 500 or 2000 of them (yes, Twitter will do that). Start working up the list, oldest followers first. Reconnect with each and every one of your Tweeps, even if you have no idea who they are or why they ever followed you. Make sure they know why glyphosate-related tweets may be suppressed on the "Top" view of any page (and Glyphosate Awareness may, for example, be suppressed on the "Top" view of the #glyphosate page). Warn them to make sure they read only the "Latest" version of any page on Twitter. Encourage them to encourage Twitter just to lose the "Top" version, altogether. Do this individually because, although Twitter is using the "Top" view to show people pro-glyphosate garbage instead of accurate Glyphosate Awareness, so far Twitter is not blocking our notifications or individual pages; we can still connect with each other individually--we're just being prevented from connecting at random, the way most of us "met."

2. In view of the amount of money that's been poured into schemes that rely on the use of glyphosate as if it really were "no more toxic than table salt," expect further difficulties. Not only could we be temporarily banned from Twitter; Twitter, or the whole Internet, just might collapse. Have a mail drop, and web site that displays its address, ready in case we have to move back to hand-typing (or even writing) letters to people we've never met. Start preparing to use those, because Bayer is going down, and it will go down hard.

Morgan Griffith on the Radford Arsenal and Holston Defense Plant

From U.S. Representative Morgan Griffith (R-VA-9):

"
The Radford Arsenal: A Vital Mission
The men and women who serve in the U.S. Armed Forces are among the finest our nation has to offer. It is essential that we provide them with the best equipment and supplies available.
In Shakespeare’s Richard III, the king famously laments, “A horse! A horse! My kingdom for a horse!” He loses a battle, his realm, and his life because he lacks a horse at the pivotal moment. We cannot allow our liberties to be lost because of a similar lack of quality supplies when they count the most.
Southwest Virginia makes a critical contribution to this effort. The Radford Army Ammunition Plant is the primary manufacturer of propellant for the Department of Defense. So as our warfighters battled ISIS in the Middle East, Radford’s products propelled their munitions toward their targets.
The Radford arsenal has its origins in World War II, when it employed as many as 23,000 workers. In the decades since, it has remained a key provider for the military and an important employer in our area. Current staffing consists of a small garrison of Army personnel and a larger civilian workforce managed by BAE Systems. Additionally, other businesses, such as Northrop Grumman, maintain an on-site presence as well.
Recently, the arsenal celebrated its 78^th birthday. To mark the occasion, Secretary of the Army Dr. Mark T. Esper toured the facility as part of a swing through Southwest Virginia. He is the first sitting Army Secretary to visit the plant. His itinerary also included a visit to Virginia Tech, where he met with administrators and the Corps of Cadets. In fact, Virginia Tech is one of only six institutions apart from the service academies designated as a senior military college.
I accompanied Secretary Esper on his visit to Radford. We saw all that the arsenal does for our servicemen and -women and the pride its employees take in their work. We also learned more about the projects that fulfill its aim to be a good neighbor and part of our surrounding community.
Radford is not just the primary supplier for some products, but the only supplier. Among the products the Radford arsenal makes is nitrocellulose, a propellant that produces less smoke than alternative propellants. It is the only North American manufacturer and supplier of the substance.
As an aside, it is notable that while Radford supplies the propellant, many of the explosives that are propelled are made close to the Ninth District as well, at the Holston Army Ammunition Plant in Kingsport.
While impressed by the importance of the Radford arsenal to our military supply chain, I am also encouraged by the steps its leadership and the Department of Defense have taken to improve the environment in our communities.
The manufacturing activities occurring at the site, including the burning of waste products, inevitably produce pollution. Recognizing these ills, the Department of Defense has taken important steps in recent years to minimize emissions. From 2017 to 2018, a 47 percent reduction in waste destroyed by open burning occurred. The base’s current commander, Lieutenant Colonel James Scott, set as a goal a 50 percent reduction in this waste by 2021, so the progress has been impressive.
Significant upgrades to the facility have already taken place. Perhaps the most important, the installation of a new incinerator that captures most of the emissions, is scheduled for completion in 2023.
These actions will benefit the environment and contribute to a more harmonious relationship with residents of the surrounding jurisdictions.
While we were at the arsenal, Secretary Esper and I recognized Shirley Turner, an employee celebrating 50 years of work at the facility. This milestone event indicates the long-standing importance of the Radford arsenal as an employer in the New River Valley. The facility maintains a health and wellness program for employees, another signal that it takes its obligations as a major employer seriously.
I am glad that Secretary Esper had a chance to see the important work done at the Radford Army Ammunition Plant, and proud that through the facility, Southwest Virginia continues to make a vital offering to the nation’s defense.
If you have questions, concerns, or comments, feel free to contact my office. You can call my Abingdon office at 276-525-1405 or my Christiansburg office at 540-381-5671. To reach my office via email, please visit my website at www.morgangriffith.house.gov. Also on my website is the latest material from my office, including information on votes recently taken on the floor of the House of Representatives.
"

Tortie Tuesday: Serena Has Worst Day of Her Life

Serena is the classic calico cat.

Her mother Samantha is the true tortie.

However, #TortieTuesday embraces both types of three-colored cats.

Serena is a little over one year old, and as I left, late for work, this morning it occurred to me that this is the worst day of Serena's life so far--the first time I've seen her express pain or fear.

Last spring, Samantha gave birth to four kittens who all looked premature. One couldn't possibly have lived; one looked as if it might live, but it never did; one lived for less than a day. This left Serena well fed on all of her mother's milk, and although she often expressed boredom and impatience at having only adult cats and humans to play with, she was the biggest, strongest, healthiest kitten ever. She never showed a reaction during last year's glyphosate poisoning episodes. She was bigger than her mother before cold weather arrived, and there was none of the usual kitten drama about wanting to spend warm nights indoors because spring kittens' fluffy coats don't provide enough insulation...Serena is part Manx, and her extra-thick coat did provide insulation. She'd come into the warm office room where she was born to show friendliness, then start panting from the heat and go out, like an adult cat...in contrast to Samantha, a scaredycat who spent most of her first winter indoors in a nice safe cage, by choice.

I have no idea why she chose the name she did. (It was unmistakably her choice, among others.) She never knew her grandmother Irene, she never watched the "Bewitched" show (where I didn't remember that the character Samantha had a relative called Serena, myself), and I don't think she'd ever heard of the tennis champion either...although I will say Serena-cat's behavior looks as if she'd dedicated her life to emulating a big, strong, yet feminine and motherly athlete. I have more respect for Serena Williams than I have for most athletes, and more for Serena-cat than I have for most spring kittens.

Serena has always been very friendly and affectionate with me, though not in a way other people would understand. As an only kitten she didn't need any more snuggling and mothering. She needed more romping and playing. She shows affection by "clawing and chawing." (I don't encourage her to get close to other people for that reason.) She has really tried to be gentle about slapping and chomping me, too. She has expressed apology. However, she was delighted when someone brought us a rescued feral cat with a kitten just her age! She and Traveller were born a hundred miles apart, but nobody could tell them they're not brother and sister. It's been hard to separate them since the first day they were allowed to sniff each other and start their first game of tag.

So during the night before the first day of March, Serena gave birth to four cute, healthy kittens. One does have a Manx body shape, but all four have complete tails. I worried about them being out on the porch through the winds of March. Serena assured me I didn't need to worry. She comes from a long line of abnormally intelligent cats. She figured out how to drag heavy fabric down between stacks of storage bins to make a warm, soft, well insulated nest with a series of three overlapping doorways to keep out drafts. On the chilliest nights she let Traveller join her and the kittens for extra warmth. The nest remained snug...until the kittens started exploring the world.

Kittens usually want to explore the world when they're six weeks old, but these are Serena's kittens. At five weeks they were as big and as ready to explore as ordinary kittens are at six weeks. She showed them to me right away, and three of the four of them instantly recognized that a human is to snuggle up to. The fourth one backed away and hissed at first, then became the cuddliest of the four by the second day.

None of them is either black or calico, but a kitten of any shape or color is adorable. And we mustn't forget Traveller, still a growing year-old kitten himself...Trav is as proud and protective of these kittens as any human uncle ever was. I have never seen a tomcat bond with new kittens like that before. I don't think Traveller is especially smart or social, by himself, but he knows whose lead to follow! Serena is a true Queen of Social Cats, fully worthy of her remarkably clever and social predecessors Heather, Bisquit, Polly, Patchnose, and the unforgettable Black Magic.

Oh it was a charming weekend at the Cat Sanctuary! Fruit trees and their ornamental cousins, and forsythia, still show a few blooms as redbuds and violets start to color the land. The weather was mild, sunny, and pleasant. The kittens spent Saturday learning how to climb and jump, then spent Sunday and Monday doing all the adorable kitten tricks in the book. If they had been calicos, Torties, or Tuxies they couldn't have been cuter. Even the one with that jugheaded Manx look...he may never be handsome, but he's a purry, cuddly, lovable little guy, with almost enough black spots in his white coat to qualify as a Tuxie.

And then...on Monday they started refusing milk, and crying and screaming when Serena tried to groom them.

Serena remembered where I keep a solution of powdered food-quality charcoal in water in case of accidental poisoning. This is a safe home remedy for humans and domestic animals, though some pharmacies don't stock it because people with food intolerance could easily abuse it. Dose is one teaspoon per cup, one full cup for an adult human, 5 cc for an adult cat, 1 cc for a kitten, a bucketful for a cow. Serena hasn't had this problem herself, but she remembered where I'd put the remedy after giving it to Samantha and Traveller. She walked up to me as I was typing and nonverbally asked for a dose by pointing, first to where the container was kept, then to the container.

Overnight the kittens had lost their bounce and become whiny, listless, bloated, and glassy-eyed; two of them even had globs of mucus around their eyes. Kittens bloat up quickly if they drink their milk without being groomed and cleaned, because, as all cat rescuers know, their bowels don't move without the external stimulation of brisk light strokes around the back section of the kitten. What comes out of healthy kittens is bland white curds and whey, which mother cats eat. Sick kittens' mothers nonverbally say "Urgh" and either "abandon" the kittens, or dump them at their humans' feet saying "See if you can do anything about this."

So Serena did that. If you watch cats closely, "abandon" is hardly the word for the way they walk away from sick kittens. You can see their distress as they tiptoe slowly away. From time to time they'll come back to see whether their babies are living. Usually kittens whose mothers can't feed and clean them will die, and often their mothers are sick too, but if they do survive their reunion will be joyful.

On Monday I gave the kittens three doses of charcoal each, and tried cleaning them. No use. Hardly a drop of tainted cat whey came out of each kitten. They screeched and clawed at my hands during each effort--although they recognized good intentions. They came back to me, as a family of four, to solicit the next feeding and cleaning session six hours after the previous one. They would rest in a basket in the office, I'd be typing on the computer, and then I'd hear scrabbling at the back of the desk and see four little faces peering around the edge. They waited to be invited, then swarmed up for their home remedy, however much they didn't enjoy it. I would not have tried to make that up. During the midday feeding the sickest kitten was feverish, but by evening the fever broke and the kittens were starting to bounce and scamper again.

By Monday evening Serena was glassy-eyed, feverish, and irritable as she requested another dose of charcoal. Her teats were swollen and felt inflamed. The kittens saw her and squeaked for milk, and Serena surged up off my lap, nonverbally saying "They can jollywell have this milk if it kills them."

It didn't kill them. In fact, although the curds were still backed up inside the kittens this morning, enough whey came out to reduce the bloating. They wanted to nurse again, and Serena let them.

But both Serena and I knew that allowing kittens to take nourishment, in this condition, is risky--sort of a kill-or-cure.

Samantha always used to try to follow me to work, being afraid to stay home alone or even with the senior cats when they were present. Traveller used to try to follow me, being afraid to miss any possible petting or cuddling time. Serena never tried to follow me; she kept the other two at home! But this morning, when I was out of sight of the house, only one cat was following me. That was Serena, looking distressed. She even meowed--something Real Queen Cats seldom do! "Don't leave us alone," she cried, with body language I've often seen on other cats but never seen on Serena.

I hadn't wanted to leave them alone. If I hadn't made a commitment to host the #GlyphosateAwareness live chat on Twitter on Tuesdays, I wouldn't have come online today.

I locked Serena indoors and left her. I am not a happy camper today either.

Why had such happy, healthy cats suddenly become so miserable? Something they'd eaten, I thought, and then I came down the hill into town and saw the dead grey and brown tops of the few weeds that grow within ten yards of the railroad track. So the wind and Sunday night's rain must have kept the glyphosate vapors away from me, but cats can never resist a poisoned bird or cricket...

We have got to get glyphosate banned in the United States, Gentle Readers. We've won the right to get local bans. Please nag your local councils today.

Essay for a Contest I Can't Win

Hope Clark shared this information about the contest for which I'm not qualified, but some of you readers might be...

"
IRENE ADLER PRIZE
http://www.lucasaykroyd.com/scholarships
NO ENTRY FEE. Deadline April 30, 2019. Pays $1,000 to a woman pursuing a degree in journalism, creative writing, or literature at a recognized post-secondary institution in the U.S. or Canada, based on an essay competition. Submit a 500-word essay in English on one of the following three topics:

“Why are you studying journalism, creative writing, or literature?”
“Which woman inspires you to write despite not being principally known as a writer herself?”
“If you could live anywhere outside North America, where would you go and what would you do there?”
"

Since I'm not enrolled in any college, university, or trade school course I'm obviously disqualified from the scholarship contest, but these prompts appeal to me.

("Who is Hope Clark?" someone might ask. Hope Clark is the pen name of a mystery writer on whose mailing list all aspiring authors want to be. Here's an Amazon link to her new novel...this "stand-alone" detective story teams two characters who appeared separately in earlier novels.)



Out of respect for our readers overseas I'll mention, and then tactfully drop, the fact that I personally wouldn't want to leave North America. The hills of Britain and Ireland appeal to my eyes, and the fundamental weirdness of Iceland is something I might like to visit once, but as a place to live, the only alternative to these United States that I can imagine would be Canada. I like snow. I don't mind rewriting everything in a language I can read but not actually speak. I liked my temporarily Canadian husband enough that I'd have to beware of resenting the rest of the country for not being him. But it wouldn't be home, which is one particular ridge and no other in the Blue Ridge Mountains.

So let's go with the question about the inspiring woman...that'd be Grandma Bonnie Peters, who chose that screen name when she was a proud new grandmother of a child who's now old enough to vote. She warbled about wanting to write a business blog for years. She even sold a few pieces to Associated Content; she was the one who invited me to that site. She never quite got the business site going, and although she's fed me topics over the years, she's never written her own blog.

Nobody is perfect. GBP has faults. I'll mention that to avoid sounding fangirly, and move on.

GBP was an undiagnosed celiac up to the age of 45 or 50 or thereabouts. She was awarded a scholarship to go to college based on her grades in high school, but had an opportunity to go straight into business, instead, and took it. As an empty-nester she went to college and graduated near the head of the class there, too, with a degree in geriatric nursing. She had been a home nurse without the degree and continued to be one with the degree.

She has always made time for a lot of serious fun too. As a Seventh-Day Adventist she taught "Sabbath School" and led "Pathfinder" troops, which are similar to Sunday School and Scouts, in hiking, camping, and swimming. As a diagnosed celiac she taught both vegan and gluten-free cooking schools, branded "Allergy-Ease Foods," some of which were frozen, shipped, and sold around the Eastern States, and briefly sold gluten-free vegan meals in a "Test Kitchen." Decorated with informative fact sheets on the walls instead of pretty pictures, entertaining diners with instructional videos rather than music, the Test Kitchen offered the best meal deals in Tennessee. Sometimes they were even served by the child whose redrawn baby picture was part of the Allergy-Ease logo.

As a home nurse I was GBP's apprentice but, as an adult, I never worked as either a partner or a competitor with her. Her "miracle cures" (she was credited with several) were accomplished by correcting patients' diets; mine (I've been credited with a few) were accomplished by trigger-point massage and exercise. That's not to suggest that GBP didn't walk and work out with patients, too, or that I never showed people how to cook special diet foods. Both approaches will cure some conditions that people have "just had to live with, taking expensive meds that have side effects," for years until they try diet and/or exercise. GBP is generally more wary about touching patients than I am, and I'm generally more wary about recommending food.

She's also been an active grandmother, active member and recruiter for a Senior Hiking Club, farmer, gardener, interior decorator, and lead soprano in multiple church choirs--Seventh-Day Adventists are allowed to attend other churches on Sunday, and through old friendship and barter, first a Baptist church and then a Presbyterian church got GBP to sing in their choirs. She has occasionally dated, since her husband died, but says anyone she'd date "would have to be a card-carrying Adventist."

All the best recipes on this web site are GBP's. She has some good stories, too, if and when she makes a final decision to post them.

What I've written for other publishers has been my own, or theirs, or a combination of both...but this web site is officially at least half GBP's. If she's not written more of her own posts or edited or vetoed more of other people's, that's been her choice.